The Biggest and Best Guinness World Record-Breaking Foods

As Americans, we need everything to be the biggest. We have a dangerous tendency to supersize everything in our lives, from our TVs to our cars to our houses. Why? Because extravagance and size symbolize wealth and status. So if size truly does matter—and you can actually attribute value and success to length, width, and diameter—then the food we eat should also be ridiculously huge, right? Which is why we’ve rounded up the biggest and best Guinness Book of World Record-breaking foods.

The literal lengths people will go to in order to craft an over-sized meal to win a coveted Guinness World Record is insane—and even non-Americans like to get in on the act from time to time. Just take a look at the 2,000-pound burger and 80-foot-long nacho rivers of the world. People will give up unreasonable amounts of time, money, and labor to complete one of these colossal projects. The least we can do is acknowledge them in an Internet list.

Check out the biggest and best Guinness Book of World Record-breaking foods, including an ice-cream cake that’s probably bigger than your apartment.

The world's largest chicken nugget

Size: 51.1lbs, 3.25ft x 2ft
Where: Mifflintown, PA
When: 2013
This monster nugget was constructed by Empire Kosher in celebration of its 75th anniversary. Empire Kosher is the largest producer of kosher poultry in the United States. This nugget took more than three hours to cook and is the size of about 750 normal-sized nuggets. And, yes, it's all kosher.

The world's biggest burger

Size: 913.54kg (2,014lb), which includes 60lbs of bacon, 50lbs of lettuce, 50lbs of sliced onions, 40lbs of pickles, and 40lbs of cheese
Where: Carlton, MN
When: 2012
Black Bear Casino Resort was responsible for crafting this insane bacon cheeseburger. It took more than four hours to cook the patty and seven hours to bake the bun. They must have stolen the recipe from Mondo Burger—you know, the villainous, hormone-pumped burger competitors of Kenan and Kel's Good Burger. Just think: This burger weighed the same as 224 average-sized domesticated cats.

The world's largest batch of nachos

Size: 4,689lbs, 80ft long
Where: University of Kansas, MO
When: 2012
This nacho train was constructed with the help of more than 80 volunteers in an effort to raise money for LINK Kitchen, a Kansas-based charity that provides home-cooked meals for the homeless and hungry. As we mentioned earlier in our Great Nacho Hunt story, this vat of soggy, salsa and cheese-laden chips is almost half the weight of a Southeast Asian forest elephant.

The world's biggest gingerbread house

Size: The house was 45ft 6in long, 35ft 6in wide, and approximately 60ft tall. It required 14,250lbs of gingerbread, 4,750lbs of icing, and one ton of candy.
Where: Mall of America, Bloomington, MN
When: 2006
Robert Pelcher built this lavish and edible house with a team of volunteers. It took them nearly 1,700 hours to build the structure, which spanned 1,500 square feet. To put that in perspective, if this gingerbread house were a Midtown Manhattan apartment, it'd cost you about $10,000 a month to rent.

The world's largest gluten-free pizza

Size: 131ft in diameter, 51,25 lbs. The pie includeed 19,800lbs of flour, 10,000lbs of tomato sauce, 8,800lbs of mozzarella cheese, 1,488lbs of margarine, 551lbs of rock salt, 220lbs of lettuce, and 55lbs of vinegar.
Where: Rome, Italy
When: 2012
As Huffington Postreports, "The process of baking such a massive pizza is as arduous as it sounds. The five chefs spent over 48 hours baking the dough in over 5,000 batches." Damn, gluten-free is so in vogue right now, even larger-than-life pizza chefs are doing it. Celiacs, unite!

The world's biggest chocolate bar.

Size: Weighed 12,770lbs and 4.48oz; 13ft and 1.48in x 1ft and 1.78in
Where: Alfreton, Derbyshire, UK
When: 2011
To celebrate 100 years of making chocolate, Thortons decided to craft this monstrous chocolate bar. It took about 10 hours to fill the mold and another three days to cool the chocolate off. The company claims to have made it with the exact same recipe as its classic milk chocolate bars. Good luck digging your teeth into this.

The world's biggest chocolate chip cookie.

Size: 102ft wide and 40,000lbs
Where: Flat Rock, NC
When: 2003
These guys literally had to build a special oven to bake this cookie. Their website breaks it down into three steps:

Step 1: Create a layered base with gravel, pearlite (the white stuff in potting soil), and aluminum sheets on top to serve as a pan.

Step 2: Cover the oven with layers of polyester film (the material helium balloons are made of) to keep the heat trapped inside.

Step 3: Surround the pan with heaters, more than 20, that together could raise the oven temperature to well over 350 degrees.

Here's a diagram:

The world's biggest bowl of mac and cheese

Size: 2,469lbs, consisting of 57 lbs of cooked macaroni, 286lbs of mixed cheese, 56lbs of butter, 26lbs of flour, 1,100lbs of milk, and 61lbs of dry seasoning blend
Where: New Orleans, LA
When: 2010
Cabot Creamery Cooperative teamed up with chef John Folse to concoct this hefty vat of mac and cheese in a cast iron kettle from the 18th century. We're still trying to figure out how many boxes of Annie's Mac we'd have to buy to beat this record.

The world's largest pancake

Size: 49ft 3in in diameter and 2.5 cm (1 in) thick. Weighed 6,614lbs.
Where: Rochdale, Manchester, United Kingdom
When: 1994
When a pancake gets to be the size of a yacht, it's not breakfast anymore, it's construction. It's hard enough watching rookie pancake chefs fail at trying to flip their normal-size flapjack, but these guys ensured success by bringing in cranes to flip the mega-flapjack over.

The world's largest sushi roll

Size: 1.5 miles long, featuring 1.5 tons of rice, 500 kg of cucumbers, 14,000 pieces of seaweed, and 25 kg of sesame
Where: Yekaterinburg, Russia
When: 2011
What is the world coming to when sushi joints spend all their time making rolls that run for miles? In order to complete this, 60 chefs worked for 15 hours rolling rice and seaweed. Check out a quick video of the event below:

The world's biggest ice cream cake.

Size: 10.1 metric tons. 14 ft 7 in x 13 ft 3 in x 3 ft 3 in
Where: Toronto, Canada
When: 2011
Imagine being in graduate school and having a professor ask you to make the biggest ice-cream cake in the world and ensure that it doesn't collapse on itself or melt. Yeah, it seems like an odd situation, but that's exactly what happened at the University of Toronto. A class of students studying Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry were the masterminds behind this creation, which makes the pyramids of Giza look like child's play. (Not really...but it's pretty insane.)

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